


Lineage

by Kat2107



Series: Legacy [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Competence Porn, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid!Fic, Kylo NO!, Light BDSM, M/M, awards for worst father of the century, erotic patricide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-19 08:14:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5960371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat2107/pseuds/Kat2107
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>What made a good father?</i><br/> </p><p>One question that Kylo Ren had never asked himself, not even... after.</p><p>But then he met Brendol Hux Sr. and learned a few things; what a bad father was like, for one, and that Hux had a son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lineage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zibomotua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zibomotua/gifts).



> Prompt: "Hux's father comes to visit. Kylo learns things about Hux he never knew. (can but doesn't have to include Hux and Kylo hiding their relationship)"
> 
> Well, I wrote something.... perhaps not what you expected, but technically it totally fills the prompt.
> 
> The biggest thanks for this goes to [Eridani](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Eridani/pseuds/Eridani) who, as usual, is an absolutely invaluable source of input and anti-anxiety hugs.  
> Special thanks, too, to [pkabyssinian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/pkabyssinian/pseuds/pkabyssinian) who cheered me on and so graciously gave me space from our project, when I needed to take a step back and delve into something less dark. ^^

Kylo Ren watched the line of Hux’s shoulder quiver almost imperceptibly against the backdrop of Core One, the administrative center of the First Order territories, as seen through the scenic window of his quarters. 

The man's neatly combed hair made for a pretty flaming halo against the green of the central land mass of the planet, while the stern lines of his uniform and his clenched hands added only to the impression that the General was tense enough to break.

In the whole of the two years since they shared command of the Finalizer, Ren had never seen him like he had been in the last week. Not even when they had been at their worst, ready to tear each other apart at a moment’s notice. Not in the year since they had started sharing a bed, nor in the months since they had actually started sharing an emotional bond.

During the day Hux was all clipped words, precise commands, the short temperedness that he wore like a foreboding cloud only showing in his thoughts, perpetually cynical, with nothing good to say about any of his underlings; not even Chief Petty Officer Unamo, of whom Hux usually was in equal measures fond and proud. 

If he allowed Ren to enter at all.

At night he was too tense to sleep, nightmares a more common occurrence than their absence. The comfort he sought was of the kind that ended in blood and bruises, his pained moans muffled by his pillow as Kylo Ren held him down, plowing his ass in the knowledge that he hurt him. And yet Hux begged him ‘harder, harder’ until Kylo wrapped his fingers or the force around his neck and choked him to within an inch of consciousness.

On these nights, Hux came with a gurgled scream that echoed for hours after in Kylo Ren’s mind, the pain that drove Hux barely abated. 

The man who once had been Ben Solo was not proud of who his father had been, far from it. But if this was the effect that a visit from Brendol Hux Sr. had on his son, Kylo needed to find a way to stage an airlock malfunction.

“It is time,” Kylo stated now, as he stepped closer to Hux watching the shuttle approach. He dared not touch the meticulously kept uniform or Hux’s face. Useless anyways, his mask kept them apart from what meager comfort he could offer. 

The borders of Hux conscious were a tightly locked wasteland. Guarded by gleaming black walls and the sounds of a cane on flesh as Ren reached out, brushed his thoughts up to him. Hux welcomed him with a tense sigh, opened his defenses just enough that Kylo could push in and take up the space that was _his_ in a way so personal that he barely had the words to define it. With Snoke so close to his mind that was a good thing and Kylo had given up soon in his attempts to define anything. Snoke could not find what didn't exist.

_You will dine with him in a formal setting and then he will leave. You are receiving a First Order dignitary, General. Nothing more._

Hux cast a bland gaze over his shoulder and huffed, his eyes softening momentarily.

_And then we will kick him off our ship…_

Snorting, Hux cut him off with an opinionated flash of his usual sarcasm.

“Every time you say “our ship” I have a pre-emptive panic attack at the thought of you attempting to command the _Finalizer_.”

_… and then I will drag you to your quarters by your throat, General, force you to your knees and proceed to fuck you until you beg me for release. In your beautiful mind, of course, because my fingers will be locked around your throat as you are splayed before me, your legs spread and your oh so sensitive skin blushing and bruising._

“...which is physically impossible, Ren, if I am on my knees.” Hux shook his head, but a flush had crept above the crisp collar of his uniform, an unexpected splash of color in the pristine surroundings.

 _Leave that to me, General. You are rarely as beautiful as when you are helpless and thoroughly debauched._ Kylo stepped forward, reaching out with one gloved hand to brush his thumb over the man’s lush lower lip, a bruised, darker shade in his alabaster face, offset sharply against its pale background. The same shade found a painful counterpart in the shadows under Hux's eyes.

_You will scream for me tonight, Hux. You will beg._

Cutting the intimacy between them, he stepped back to watch the shuttle vanish from the viewport and approach one of the landing bays.

_And should you wish for your father to fall victim to a regrettable lapse in my temper… one word, Hux, and he will be gone._

The smile in his voice found an equivalent in the one that curled the corner of the General’s mouth, the minimal drop in his shoulders. 

“Thank you Lord Ren, but I don’t think that will be necessary. I’d rather you spent your energies on not disclosing…”

“...that his son screams my name when he is coming… Yes, Hux, I remember.”

Hux's glance screamed murder as he marched past Kylo’s shoulder, but murder was a hundred times better than pain.

 

***

 

 _He is old._ A weird thought, but true. 

Hux was marble cut perfection, timeless, classic beauty. His father was just old. Not quite frail, but his clear eyes had glazed over, his eyelids were bogged down by wrinkles, gray hair thinned out, his teeth far too white to be his anymore. He looked like a relic that was only moving out of spite, instead of spirit. 

Nothing, absolutely nothing justified the effect that old man had on Hux. 

But then, fathers were a difficult subject for everyone, were they not?

 

 

By the time Hux Sr and Hux Jr sat at the dinner table set in a private part of the officer’s mess, the General had had to reach out and wrap cool calm around the violently unpredictable mind locked onto his three times already.

Whatever Hux Sr. was, and old and frail sure came to mind, first and foremost he was vicious.

He had regarded Kylo Ren with cool calculation and then nodded to himself. 

“Well, Supreme Leader Snoke must trust you very much, if he won’t let you walk around ‘your’ ship without an … escort.”

That had been the first time Hux had flinched. The first time Ren had felt the old man’s throat under his fingertips and the sharp poke in his mind. 

The entrée were Naboo mussels in a light sauce. Luckily Kylo Ren’s mask filtered smell. 

He hated mussels. 

Were that not exactly the kind of thing Hux thought of, Kylo would never have assumed that the dish had been chosen to make him feel better about standing in the background like the silent, decorative menace that he was. 

Decorative or not, he shared this ship with General Hux and that alone was reason enough to be here.

They got through the soup without incident, mainly because Hux took his sweet time to outline the specs of the Finalizer in great detail. 

Ren loved him for it. The man knew a ship the size of a city state in such detail, simply because he had made it his mission to do so, convinced that he needed to be able to command it in every said detail if necessary. 

Hux had had simulations written that covered several severe incidents, from hull breaches to coolant leaks in increasing improbabilities and difficulties and he had done them, alongside his officers until he had mastered each single one. 

It had been his anal attention to detail that had been the straw that broke the figurative back of the stupid bantha that Kylo Ren was. The bit that pulled him to Hux and ruined him for anybody else.

Hux had suggested running a test: a Hyperspace jump out of a planet’s gravitational field. The simulation scenarios deemed it possible and Hux wanted to test it under controlled circumstances. In case, they ever needed to do it in combat.

“This ship is not made to do a jump out of the gravitational field of anything, General.”

“Lord Ren, when have you become an expert in piloting?” 

‘Since I learned to fly at five, you twat,’ Ren had wanted to yell, had instead - he was still proud of his self-control - listed all the very real reasons why a ship with the size of the Finalizer was not able to reach, let alone cross the hyperspace barrier without the bi-lateral gravitational pull tearing it apart because the hyperdrive motivators could not reach the threshold. 

To which Hux had sent everybody out of the conference room and locked the door and then he had calculated down to the last core load, why it could. With 70% probability. 99% if the planet was below a standard Coruscant mass.

Ren had slammed him down on the table and sucked the smugness out of him through his dick. Then he had fucked him. And then Hux had proven that he was right.

 

They got to the main course by grace of Kylo Ren asking about current politics. He didn’t give a fuck about politics, but as long as old Hux talked, Kylo’s General was spared the man’s attention. 

He thought. He had been wrong. That vicious reptile just went from mining trade to gutting his son, without batting an eyelash.

“Tell me, Lord Ren, as his father interested in his well-being… has my son found companionship on this fine vessel? One would assume- “ Hux shoulder hunched and Ren added five to his tally of times he wanted to murder that wrinkly bastard. “- there are enough willing young men on board who jump at the chance to better their station.” 

_I could push the piece of bread down his windpipe with the Force. Tragic accident._

_Ren, no...You can’t run around killing everybody’s fathers just because they are difficult._

Ouch.

_Can’t I…?_

_Hell, Ren…I’m sorry._ Hux never apologized. He snarled, and when done right he begged - pleaded even. He didn’t apologize. He also never brought up Han Solo. 

“Commandant Hux…” Ren’s deep breath was modulated by his mask. “I work with the General. I don’t care what he does when he is not at his post. And had you spent more time thinking about your duties to the First Order instead of wasting so much of it ruminating about your son’s sex life, you might be standing on this ship’s bridge instead of being overtaken by him when he is barely half your age.” The General’s fork hit the porcelain of his plate far too loud. “Do not dare assume that I will engage into your pettiness, Commandant.”

“Ren…” Hux glanced over his shoulder, Ren ignored him, his gazed fixed on the other side of the table. 

Mistake. Nobody said it, but Kylo heard it cut through the Force anyways. He had made a grave mistake and Hux would be the one to pay, one way or another and oh, how he wanted this old fart’s blood to run over his hands.

It seemed he had indeed become somewhat of an expert at patricide.

“Brendol…,” the old man snarled, vitriol barely sugar-coated by manners. “why don’t you tell your attack dog to leave us alone, so we can talk eye to eye a little?” 

Hux Sr.’s words sharpened with every syllable, each sound morphing into a blade of their own, cutting at vulnerabilities only he could perceive. The General’s face showed nothing, but friendly neutrality. No outside observer could have gleaned anything from that face. Such control, such beautiful control. So hard and so incredibly rewarding to break.

So false. 

No one could have guessed because no one was in Hux's head, privy to the growing flutter of unadulterated panic, to the sheer strength it took him to not cast his gaze downwards and bow to his father’s will.

Hux Sr. knew exactly what to say and where to strike because he had planted these vulnerabilities, each with unending care. He had once - the picture flashed up just now in blinding clarity - separated a young boy from his son that way and again several times over the years, convincing Hux's friends to abandon him, until he had Hux at a point where he abandoned anyone even remotely close to him, before the punishment became too severe. Before they died… __

_What?_ Ren stared the back of his lover’s head and simmered.

Years back, a boy named Ben Organa-Solo, angry already at her disregard of him, but still wildly smitten with his mother, had watched Leia Organa smack down the Mandalorian delegate with nothing, but a smile and a few choice words.

Kylo Ren preferred bisecting people with his lightsaber, or making them dance like puppets with a crushing grip on their minds, but…

His thoughts tipped, weirdly not in any of his predictable directions.

The Supreme Leader preferred expressedly for him not to use mundane measures. Hux had outright forbidden him to kill the nasty, shriveled vulture that had somehow sired this beautiful, proud man whose back now quivered with the effort to keep it together. A conflict of interest. 

Parents did not always express themselves openly in their children, bringing forth something into this world that was vastly different, unwanted sometimes. Still he had once been the son of one of the most powerful women in the Galaxy. 

When dealing with politicians and nasty old men, do as politicians and old women did, or something like that.

He smiled, and though invisible, the distorter in the mask had a beautiful habit of expressing Kylo Ren’s stated emotions perfectly clear. “I will relay the Supreme Leader your esteemed opinion about his apprentice, _Commandant_ Hux.” The surface of the elder Hux's wine froze, frost licking up the glass from the inside. “I am sure he will be… delighted.” 

Of course, he wouldn’t be. Snoke wouldn't care. But for whatever misplaced notion of affection drove Hux to protect this old man from Kylo Ren, nothing in the universe would keep him from scaring the man until he pissed his pants until the blanching, feeble corpse on the other side of the table understood absolutely how far off limits his son was. 

The only man in this room to ever hurt Hux again was Kylo Ren if the General asked nicely for it. 

The seconds ticked by. Breathe in, breathe out. Loud enough for the distorter to pick it up. 

While Hux was long past being unnerved by the sounds, his father took much longer to grab onto anything resembling equilibrium. Even as he found his voice again, wheezing desperately past the fear he radiated like a broken hyperdrive, there was nothing but a weak:

“Well, I worry, of course, as his father.”

“Of course, you do.” Kylo smiled to a warning tap of Hux fingers of the table.

_‘I’m not hurting him, only scaring him a little.’_

_‘Don’t, Ren. I want him off my ship as fast as possible, not lingering in the medbay with a heart attack.’_

Kylo reached out with his mind and brushed invisible fingers gently over his lover’s neck.

_‘He doesn’t deserve you being his son.”_

Ben hadn’t lingered in his old life long enough for his parents to find out that he didn't care for females, but he never had assumed it would have been a problem. For all their faults, for the giant disappointment that Han Solo had been… he had loved his son, to his last breath. But then being a Dark Side user probably overshadowed the things he did in bed. _‘He doesn’t get to hurt you like this, just because he doesn’t like the fact that his son prefers men.’_

 _‘Worse, actually.’_ Hux murmured in his mind, unable to hide the weariness in his thoughts. 

_‘His son does not only distinctly prefer men… he also likes to be fucked.’_

Disgust clouded everything in Hux's sentence as if it were a particular fault of his own to be so misrendered. It was his words, though, that caught Kylo Ren’s interest. 

_‘Does he know?’_

The mental image of the beautiful expanse of Hux back stretched out before him came unbidden. It was accompanied by the memory of Kylo seated to the hilt in Hux’s ass, murmuring encouragements as Hux fell apart on him, throwing back his head in free abandon, grinding against Ren with an ecstatic cry. 

‘ _No, of course not, he just suspects out of simple, vile… No, Ren, NO_!”’

Panic flared with bright hot agony as pictures tumbled about Hux‘s mind, each a beat of pain and humiliation in Hux's memory that made it far too easy to imagine the cockroach opposite Hux torn limb from limb. Beautiful, sweet sing song of hatred, humming through his veins… 

Kylo shut it down, banished it into silent, seething fury, feeding an inner well, created for this exact purpose. It was a stop-gap measure at best, his hatred a force impossible to be stopped. One of the reasons he had so utterly failed as… 

Kylo Ren slammed that door as well. 

In front of him Hux back quivered with effort, his face impossibly still, both of them saved by the fact that the meat was good beyond comparison and Hux Sr. busy pretending he was enjoying it, lest he looked at the man that stood at his son’s back.

‘ _Shhhh…_ ’ Phantom fingers carded through Hux’s hair without actually disturbing a strand. “ _You are safe with me. I would never hurt you like that_ ,” Kylo Ren promised, loading just another secret onto Hux's heart. A safety deposit to calm his lover’s painful vulnerabilities, each so unspeakably… unlikely. 

Hux faced torture with an annoyed sneer, he faced battle with unshakeable calm, but the thought of one private moment revealed threw him into terror. 

_‘Because pain is just pain, it will end eventually, but this is…_ ‘

Shame, his mind whispered, ammunition; the true torture, devised for a failed, weak, soft- bodied disappointment. 

The voice supplying it was Hux's, the words were his father's. 

_‘Are you sure, I cannot kill him?’_

_‘Yes, Ren, beyond a doubt.’_

Ren had his eyes fixed on the old man, as he forked up another piece of meat and pulled off fine strands with now undoubtedly false teeth. 

Kylo saw the nasty glint in his eyes, felt the miasma of sickly green envy and joy before the old fart even opened his mouth to speak. 

His mind grabbed the holoscreen hung high on the wall behind Hux Sr. before the first syllable was uttered. The First Order emblem flickered weakly over the screen, nobody would miss it. This wasn’t heresy exactly because Force knew there were enough of those on the Finalizer. 

Hux be damned, if that old scarecrow said one more thing...

“I am sure, you will be glad to hear, Brendol,” Commandant Brendol Hux smiled and his son stiffened. The holoscreen trembled. “that your son is not showing any of your misgivings.” 

The sole reason the screen neither fell nor cracked Hux Sr.’s skull was the immediate need to contain Hux's sudden outburst of wildly conflicting emotions, to dampen it to something… anything that didn't show on his face. He fought, he fought so bravely when the wave of pain crested and slammed into his mental defenses, but with the last days’ strain and the constant needling his father had unleashed onto him since he had set a foot on _their_ ship, Hux was worn so thin that anything could have broken his composure. And this was far beyond ‘anything’.

Kylo Ren wrapped calm he didn’t feel around Hux’s burning heart, soothed with cool that he had drawn so many times from the man and weaved his fury into Hux mental walls until nothing, absolutely nothing of his screams bled through. 

“I am pleased to hear that indeed, father. I am sure your grandson will turn out to your liking.”

Bitterness flared up within the confines of Hux’s mind and suddenly all of Hux's pain in the last days, all of his insane groveling to this man were thrown into sharp clarity. 

A yoke, a leash to quell anything undesirable, to choke this brilliant man into obedience. 

_‘How?’_ Ren fumed as Hux Sr. in the background went on, listing the achievements in tests that down to the last belonged to the Stormtrooper program the old man had devised.

‘ _How?’_ Ren repeated, circling invisible fingers on the back of the General’s neck. 

‘ _Drugs were involved and several very unpleasant encounters._ ’

Hux stiffened as Ren’s control slipped momentarily and he squeezed the skin he had only meant to caress.

‘ _Sorry...I’m… how old is he?_ “

‘ _Let it go, Ren,_ ’ Hux tired inner voice answered, fully in control once more, but worn down beyond measure. ‘ _It is meaningless. A transaction I had to undertake to ensure my personal freedom. I fulfilled my obligations…_ ’ only Ren saw him shudder. ‘ _... and that is the end of it. “_

_“How old?’_

Hux responded with a sigh _‘He will be 6 in four months._ ’

Kylo Ren did not ask again if he could kill Hux Sr.

Though his ship _did_ have a conveniently easy to reach fuel core.

 

***

 

Their boots hammered out a synchronized staccato rhythm as they turned the last bend to Hux’s quarters. The corridor before them, like all others on their way, lay blessedly empty, courtesy of the dread-filled bubble Ren pushed out ahead of them.

Hux didn’t need some clueless sycophant to try and slime their way into his good graces, neither did he need them dead and so it was best for all involved if no one appeared in their path. 

Because Hux was not in a good space.

His heartbeat, his fragile, living’s body’s heartbeat slammed painfully against the burning acid of Kylo Ren’s rage, the only thing to fill the oppressive silence of their shared mindspace. 

Hux was choking on his words, his silence a cloak of inward facing needles, each a pinprick injury of worthless, pathetic, weak, _used_. Outwardly, though, he was nothing but composure and a face set in stone, walls up and indomitable in his control. 

As usual, he typed the code to his door and entered the room ahead of Ren, unconcerned with the uncontrollable liability in his back. His words, not Ren’s. 

The door had barely hissed shut behind them when Kylo’s helmet hit the floor with a metallic pang and was forgotten. The man in front of him had no chance to turn before Kylo grabbed him by the back of his collar and neck and yanked him around to slam him against the wall. Hux yelped when his face stopped a mere inch from the control panel, movement caught with the Force, before he could actually bang into it.

The pulse under Kylo’s hand skyrocketed. 

“Lock the door,” he whispered, lips brushing over the shell of Hux’s ear, forcing a shudder through the man’s slender frame, the choked _‘No’_ barely audible between their minds. 

“Lock the fucking door, Hux,” Ren hissed and slid his hand around Hux’s neck to his throat, palm pressing snuggly over his Adam’s apple. “Now!”

Hux fumbled the glove off his right hand and typed the fingerprint coded sequence into the control board in front of him. He got it wrong twice before Ren took his hand and guided his fingers, his voice recounting the numbers Hux typed with a lover’s murmur to his ear. 

“Very good, General.” 

The advantage of being someone’s lover exclusively, no, the privilege, Ren thought, was to know exactly what got them off. And what got Hux off every time, without fail, were power and praise. 

“You might want to open your uniform jacket, or I’ll tear it off you.” 

Kylo Ren guided Hux’s hand to the buttons at his neck then left him to his own devices. He didn’t much care about any of Hux uniform pieces, but the General was bitchy about proper conduct involving his clothes. Always so proper. So controlled, so beautiful to shatter. 

Ren’s hand slid down Hux’s front and pressed through the pants onto Hux’s half erect cock. Hux jerked back, pressing the line of his body flush against Ren’s, his breath catching with a toneless gasp, fingers fumbling on his jacket as he gulped heavily, throat bumping against the palm of Ren’s other hand. 

It was one heartbeat, two, then he opened the rest of the buttons with his customary efficiency and dropped his arms to his sides. His eyes stayed fixed ahead, shoulders tense enough to break and it was that, that had the violence in Kylo Ren’s blood soar to vicious life. 

He let go of Hux’s throat just for long enough to grab the uniform and the thin dress shirt underneath and yank it down his arms, sending the shirt buttons bouncing off the wall. 

Fingernails scraped over freckle-covered shoulders, leaving angry red welts in their wake. Kylo needed to cut them and soon. For now, though, they fulfilled their purpose and forced a pained gasp from the General’s lips. It twined itself around the roaring fury inside Kylo and licked it into something more...process oriented, something that allowed Ren to discard the jacket behind him and tear up the dress shirt to hand’s breadth wide strips.

Hux flinched violently at the sound alone and Force damn the man’s attachment to his clothing, but that shirt had been ruined anyways. Better Ren did violence to that than going too far with the body that had worn it. 

“Hands,” Kylo commanded, as he had three suitable strips, two of whom went to the floor for now. Hux raised his hands for him without a fuss, wrists already crossed and it earned him a pleased hum and a brief kiss on the shoulder. With only a hint of teeth. 

After tying his hands, Kylo placed them against the wall, pushing Hux forward with barely any force. 

Truth was, Kylo Ren didn’t quite trust himself in that moment, emotions riding too high on a brutal mix of rage, pain and murderous intent towards Hux’s father. He was just as likely to finish the destruction that the man had played at all evening, as he was to alleviate the damage it had left. And that wouldn’t do. 

Hux knew, of course, he did. His mind a tightly locked vault of carefully maintained neutrality, ironclad control that nobody quite did like Hux. They worked like that, skirting around each other’s weak points, reigning in and setting free as needed. 

Tonight Ren needed to dismantle Hux, to break open that vault. And for that, he needed to get a grip on himself. He could do that. 

His fingers scraped with loving pain around Hux’s rib cage reveling at the gasp and shudder as he scratched over vulnerable skin and down Hux's belly, reveling just as much at the silence that reigned immediately after. 

“How long do you think can you control yourself, Hux?” he taunted, with the man’s neck vulnerable and soft beneath his lips. Hux, predictably, didn’t answer, not as Kylo deftly unbuttoned his pants nor as he pushed them down. Ren didn’t bother to take them off. Hux wouldn’t need his balance, this was for the one who fucked him to take care of.

Bared, Hux looked incredibly vulnerable, his slender body overshadowed by Ren’s, his skin flushed to almost painful intensity and his pulse a frantic beat under Kylo’s lips.

Kylo had to actually conduct a small search with his mind to find the bottle of oil, sweetly smoke scented for his pleasure more than Hux’s, who preferred darker smells. Calling it to him, was barely worth a thought. He was brimming with power at that particular moment and if he tried, he would probably be able to locate Hux Sr.’s shuttle and rip open the fuel line and Hux’s wishes be damned. 

“Don’t!” came Hux sharp reprimand, a reminder that the man was never as out of it and as helpless as he seemed and very well able to keep a touch on Ren’s thoughts while keeping his own cloaked in white noise. Very well, very well indeed, Ren thought and clamped his gloved left around Hux’s throat again, stepping against his body to force the rough spun cloth of his robe against the sensitive skin that bruised with such beautiful ease. 

Hux’s choke came sharply, both in sound and thought and Ren hid a grin against his hair before he tugged off his right glove with his teeth. 

The problem with an overabundance of power was the fine control and maneuvering a bottle of oil to coat his fingers was almost more than he could handle in that situation, though it did give him the necessary focus to get a grip on his arousal before he plunged two fingers into Hux’s ass without fanfare.

He drunk up the man’s pained whimper, pressed barely past the chokehold of Kylo’s hand, that turned into a slow moan as Kylo fingerfucked him, finding where he needed to touch via the unadulterated sparks of pleasure from Hux mind. 

“Beautiful.” 

The praise came easily because it was true. The way Hux strained against every touch of Ren’s body against his, how his fingers feebly scrambled for purchase against the smooth wall, jerking at the fine fabric that held him… The way he kept his eyes tightly shut and moist lips slightly parted to fight for what little air Ren allowed him to have…

Kylo didn’t add a third finger. He withdrew, pushing aside the robe to open his pants and free his straining erection. Fuck, he needed this. More than Hux, perhaps, for now. He very much needed it before he could truly take care of his lover. 

Slicking up his cock with what little oil was left on his hand, he positioned himself and pushed into Hux with one relentless stroke. 

Hux slammed back his head, connecting hard with Kylo’s shoulder. What would have been a scream reduced to a high-pitched whine by the pressure around his throat. The walls in Hux’s mind flickered dangerously, flaring in a blaze of pain and pleasure alike, the drum beat of ‘ _Yes. Yes! Finally!_ ’ incessantly battering Kylo’s thoughts. That and the tight, slick heat of his ass forced a strangled groan from Kylo’s throat that he could have controlled no more than his fingers gripping Hux’s right hip in a punishing hold.

Because he had to hold on to _something_ that was not Hux’s throat. 

Nuzzling his face against Hux’s neck, he murmured “Ok?” with a broken voice. It was hard to think past instinct with Hux’s ass clenching around his dick as it stretched to fit him and the man dragging heaving gulps of air into his lungs, in and in out, in and out. 

Kylo Ren counted the heartbeats of his silence, knowing they both were looking for the precarious balance of the pain Hux was so desperate for and the violence that Ren needed to meet out, searching for that one spot were Hux could take what his partner was about to dish. 

He had to count a few heartbeats longer, choking back on the need to move, to slam into Hux, to take and fill his own need. Then Hux lowered his head against the hand that gripped his throat and rasped “Do it.” His head fell forward against his bound hands as Kylo pulled back slowly only to thrust back in right away, setting a punishing rhythm.

“So good, you feel so good, General,” Ren whispered and slid his left away from Hux’s throat to his bound hands, allowing him room to breathe, to gulp in big draughts of air, that in turn shifted into deep moans and little, pained gasps as Kylo thrust into his ass with barely restrained strength.

“So hot. And pliant.” Kylo hooked his thumb into the bindings that held Hux, slowing long enough to bury his right hand in the soft mop of coppery hair and yank. Hux choked, with his throat exposed like this, the pale column painfully vulnerable to Kylo Ren’s teeth, his jugular fluttering dangerously close. 

“So inviting.” Ren murmured and pulled his lover’s wrist up above his head, holding them against the wall with superior height and strength and just a hint of the Force. 

He loved this, the fact that their similar heights allowed him to do this, push Hux up against the next wall and just fuck him senseless with his teeth buried in a freckle strewn shoulder, bruising translucent skin until the blood vessels below burst, and Hux cried out in pain, struggling in vain as Ren dug deeper and broke the skin. 

He loved that Hux was light enough with his slim, wiry figure for Kylo to cloak him like this, to hold him up and keep him off balance while Hux helplessly struggled for purchase, delivered to the man fucking him and anything the Knight wanted to do. 

He loved to rile up Hux with holding back. 

“Stop fucking around, Ren. Just do it.” He loved how Hux, giving the slightest chance to speak, no matter how raw his throat, dropped all pretense of education and propriety. “Fuck me, Ren. Harder. Harder!”

Most of all, he loved that Hux loved it. 

Nothing brought Kylo Ren to his knees and out of his mind as the choked sob Hux made when Ren slammed into him and found just the right spot to make his lover’s mind blank out with lust. 

“Not yet, my General,” Kylo managed to whisper between harsh breaths, lips pressed against Hux’s throat as if he were speaking secrets directly to the man’s soul. “Not like this,” he added and turned his head, slamming his teeth into the pale shoulder to muffle his own cry. 

Kylo dropped all barriers in one blinding, blazing moment, allowing all the rage, the hatred to flood in and overtake him, Hux’s desperate shout of “Ren, please!” barely registering at the barriers of his consciousness. He just pumped into the body he held in helpless suspension until everything went away. 

The first thing he managed to say, as he came down from his orgasm, was a whispered “Shhhh”; Hux’s moaned sob the first thing he heard. 

Hux’s body still clenched around his softening cock, desperately chasing friction stolen from him, his own orgasm denied. Even through his robes, Kylo felt him shiver. 

“I needed to,” Kylo’s lips brushed over the shell of Hux’s ear as he murmured into sweat-drenched hair. “I needed this first.” 

Hux quivered under Kylo Ren’s hands, choking on another moan. “What about what I need?”

The moan turned into an angry hiss when Kylo licked the salt from his neck. There was no time to enjoy post-coital bliss. There was no post-coital bliss for him, period. 

Kylo hadn’t lied when he said, he needed this first, both his rage and the pain dulled to something manageable now that he had had Hux, worked through the barrier of his emotions with the brutality of sex and release.

Hux helped control him, that was no exaggeration. And that was the only reason why Snoke ignored their ‘tryst’, except for rare instances where he asked Hux to not fuck Ren, usually because he needed his Knight just this side of a little unhinged. Embarrassing for all involved, but ultimately a small price to pay. 

Kylo stepped back with a frown as if it only dawned on him now how many secrets they were actually keeping. How deeply involved they had become, how strongly they relied on each other and how much of their public rivalry was a front. How big a secret he was keeping from Snoke, tucked away in a secure vault in his mind and in Hux’s.

Snoke had made him who he was, for good and for bad, his teacher and mentor. Snoke had shaped his whole life, but now, as he slowly pulled out of Hux’s body and listened to the man whimper at the loss, as he slowly stroked down Hux’s back and swiped his hand over heated skin, as Hux whispered “Please, Ren,” as if his life depended on the hands on his body, Kylo Ren understood that he was no longer Snoke’s creation, neither in his core, nor in his motivations. 

“Shhhh,” he whispered again and breathed in the scent of Hux’s arousal, nuzzling at the short hairs at his nape. “I will take care of you.” 

Hux didn’t answer, only pressed his head back against Ren’s lips and shuddered under his hands, when Kylo called the discarded strips of cloth into his hand, tying one snuggly over Hux’s eyes. 

Hux didn’t make a sound either as Kylo picked him up to carry him, hands bound, legs tied by his uniforms pants slung around his ankles, to the bedroom and lay him out on the bed like a heathen sacrifice, beautiful and sensual like nobody ever saw him and utterly in possession of Kylo Ren. 

Kylo Ren was no man who knew of art, creation too far beyond his skill set or character to be important, but what he knew of beauty he found condensed in the freckle studded expanses and hotly flushed planes before him. Hux’s head drifted to the side, dark lips parted on a gasp that never found completion, begging for that last pinch of breath to break free, just like the man himself.

Kylo divested the General quickly of his boots, carefully avoiding the razor sharp knife in the right one. That was a mistake he never intended to repeat, as Hux very well knew if the minute twitch of his lips was anything to go by. 

The pants went next, crumbled in a disorderly heap at the foot of the bed. Hux would complain about that later and Kylo would, as usual, not care. 

No second was wasted on Kylo’s own clothes, though neither the long tabard nor the armored tunic were designed with undressing speed in mind. In the end, he just ripped the zipper of the tunic open and threw it onto the heap. He could repair that. Later.

Hux gasped as Kylo spread his legs, his slim hips shifting on the soft linen in a rare display of impatience. 

“What…?” he whispered, the rest of his words shattering on another pretty gasp as Kylo seamlessly slid two fingers into his ass, curling them to a third gasp, before he leaned over his lover, covering all of him from the outside world without touching anywhere but where his fingers slowly started to fuck Hux in a languid rhythm.

Hux arched off the bed with a low, breathless whine, his hands pushing up, searching for Kylo, only to be caught in a death grip that slammed them back onto the bed above Hux’s head. 

“Keep them there or I’ll have to tie them to the headboard… and I’ll need both hands for that.”

Hux arched up again, this time pushing into the grip that held his wrists with a toneless laugh that nonetheless shivered with mirth. 

“You are a fucking sadist, Ren,” Hux groaned, tilting his hips onto the Knight’s hand with open abandon. He didn’t even, Kylo found with amusement, notice that Kylo never had needed his hands to hold him down. 

“Yeah,” Kylo laughed, “I am.” 

He let go of Hux’s wrists and sat back, sliding a hand down his lover’s arm while the other worked him in a rhythm enough to keep him on the edge, but too slow to set him off. 

Hux’s head turned to Kylo, blindly searching, as he arched into the hand making its way over his shoulder - the skin so hot, almost burning up - then his cheek - Hux’s lips caught on Kylo’s palm, stole a taste - to wrap again around his throat, where the skin had reddened, but not yet bruised. 

_Yet_ , Kylo thought and brushed his thumb over the Adam’s apple as it bobbed with a heavy gulp.

Hux’s body jerked on a moan, the muscles around Ren’s fingers clenching tightly, involuntarily increasing the friction. 

_Not yet, not yet_ , Kylo murmured tonelessly, his thoughts enveloping Hux’s mind in a caress for the wild need that sparked between them, a litany of “more!” that threatened to drown out everything else. 

Ren bent down and licked his tongue in one slow drag up Hux ribcage, until he reached his nipple and Hux held his breath in anticipation.

Then he stopped. Everything.

“More?” Though sufficiently teasing, Kylo didn’t sound half as bored as he had planned, but Hux was far past caring for such games. His high-pitched whine was the answer he gave, grinding his hips down on Ren’s hand with a helpless whimper.

“Use your words, General.” 

Kylo smiled and regarded his delectable pleasure as it was presented to him, every inch a gift beyond measure, but now so much more than that. 

For Hux there were simple forms of ‘please’, barely more than shallow courtesies, even in bed, that he used to get people, Ren included, to do what he wanted. They meant something, yes, but not half as much as “Come for me, please,” the politest order he’d ever issued and the one reserved for Kylo Ren alone. And even that didn’t mean a fraction of the shattered, needy solicitation he gifted Ren with now, as he arched into the fingers that stroked his ass, the lips hovering over his chest and the waiting palm that covered his neck. 

“Please! Please, Ren. I need to… I need.”

Ren grabbed Hux’s throat, grabbed his wrists and his ankles too with the Force before he closed his teeth around a darkly flushed nipple and pushed his fingers deep, to a triumphant cry, as Hux’s walls broke and Kylo had to close his around them both.

 

“Can you stand?”

Kylo’s murmur jerked Hux from the edge of slumber, curled against Ren’s side, blissfully out of it still, ten minutes after he had come, screaming Ren’s name interspersed with bits of please and more and words Kylo Ren was very proud to have elicited. Unadulterated pettiness for the simple fact that the elder Hux would very much not have approved of any of them. 

“Don’t be daft, Ren,” Hux answered, his words muffled against Kylo’s neck, “of course I can stand,” but he made no effort to move. 

Not even Ren’s low laughter seemed enough to rouse him. 

Kylo carded his fingers through the tuft of red hair that tickled his shoulder and swept his hand down his lover’s back in a proprietary gesture, coming to rest on the low curve of Hux’s ass. 

The differences in their statures never ceased to amaze him. Despite their similar height, Hux was all wiry energy to Kylo’s brute power. Hux possessed an agility of mind and body that Kylo, for all his fighting abilities could never hope to achieve. A beautiful, powerful weapon in its own right, yet choked into submission by an idea of what it was supposed to be. 

Hux liked to pace, when he planned, liked to beat out his ideas in the rhythm of his steps, a complement to the music of his thoughts. Except, he forced himself to stand still for hours, following a doctrine that wasn’t and had never been his own. Control above all things.

He was unable to see that it had never been about controlling his circumstances and his work, but Hux himself. And that, in turn, had made Kylo Ren look harshly at all the things he thought he knew about his own childhood because no matter how much he had resented being the one who was never quite right…

The words and pictures came unbidden. Making the run through the Caltvas asteroid field, with his father yelling behind him. Laughter, that had bubbled in Ben’s chest, the absolute secure knowledge where he had needed to go. ‘Trust me, dad. Trust in the Force.’ Han’s bone crushing hug on the other side, his shaken laughter. The pride in his eyes. “Well done, boy, but let’s not tell your mother.” The signature lopsided grin. “She’ll skin me alive for endangering you.”

Who had told Hux they were worried for him? Who had told him, they were proud?

Kylo Ren scrunched up his face and curled tighter around the man at his side. 

There was by now only one thing that could make the General let go. He rarely conceded the chokehold of his will lightly, but the last weeks had been a struggle even beyond that. Hux was just that much of an asinine, stubborn bastard and he was terrified of his father. Just… not for himself.

_Are you alright, Hux?_

_Better, yes. Much better._ Even Hux mental voice, usually so crisp and clear, had the sound of post-orgiastic bliss. 

_You still need a shower, though. C’mon._

That finally had Hux raise his head to stare at his lover with a less than enthusiastic expression. The privacy of it, the utter privilege to see him with mussed up hair and raw bitten, swollen lips, three bruises lining up around his throat with one showing clear marks of teeth….

Kylo Ren reached out with his right to rub his thumb over Hux’s cheekbone, not commenting, not even openly noticing how he leaned his face into the touch. 

“Thank you,” Hux murmured, voice as raw as his mouth, though laden with far more meaning. 

It was so wrong to raise his hand and brush Hux’s hair back from his eyes, to rub his thumb across an eyebrow to Hux’s ever deepening scowl. 

It was so wrong to compare Brendol Hux Sr. to Han who had… done what he had thought was best for his son on that skywalk above the Oscillator, plowing as usual through everything Kylo might have wanted, and who had inadvertently made sure said son was here tonight, able to take care of his lover as opposed to a bottle of cheap scotch that had been Hux’s coping mechanism before they had started to take care of each other. 

_‘You have killed Han Solo. An important step on your journey, Kylo Ren.’_

_‘Anything,_ ’ Han’s memory whispered.

Kylo Ren, no Ben Solo, had taken things for granted and had underestimated others. Too late now.

“You’re welcome,” Kylo said and reach a long arm around his General’s shoulder to push him into a sitting position. 

 

They climbed under the warm spray of the water in amicable silence, both too wrung out by either pain or the demands of murder not committed to chat. They washed in silence too, always staying in each other’s field of vision, until Kylo finally pushed himself over the edge into actual thoughts.

_What’s his name?_

_Why are you so fixated on the child?_ Hux tried hard for slight annoyance, but all Kylo heard was the faint hum of old anger and a mass of emotion under a carefully maintained surface,

_Because he is your son, Hux, dammit._

_He is my father’s creation, as much as I am. I have nothing to do with anything, aside from supplying my body to the willing woman he had chosen. She was well recompensed for her services, of course._

All around them warm water pattered on tiles and their bodies, creating the illusion of a hidden grove where secrets might be spoken, if one dared. 

_I’d like to know, Hux._ This time, it was Kylo Ren, who weighted the words with everything he had, made them unignorable as per the unspoken rules that kept both of them in some kind of balance. _Please_

 _Then kneel, Lord Ren_ , Hux said, regal once more, as far from the half-broken thing of the last days as Kylo Ren was from the Jedi he had once been named after. 

Kylo would never admit it out loud, but he had missed this superior smile. 

The smile grew.

Kylo knelt then, his hands holding onto Hux’s hips, his lips brushing a feather light kiss over the deep bruises blooming there.

He looked up to the thinly smiling face of General Hux, commander of the flagship Finalizer, Destroyer of the New Republic, born without any of the choices that Kylo Ren’s former self had so callously made. Kylo watched him as he poured the contents of one the bottles that lined the stall into his hand, following willingly the command, “Bow your head, Ren.”

 _His name is Brendol Hux III._ Hux hands sunk into Kylo’s hair, finger spreading out, rubbing the shampoo into the strands, scratching with carefully applied pressure over Ren’s scalp.

_Your father named him…_

_Of course. He is my father’s, after all. Goods conceived and traded, as agreed upon..._

Kylo dropped his forehead against Hux’s belly, eyes closed, his hands resting against his flanks with no violence left in them. 

_And what name did you give him?_

The hands stilled for a heartbeat pause, then, with a sigh, Hux began to slowly work once more. 

_Andras…_ Hux had, over the course of the last year perfected the art of the put upon mental sigh. _It was my maternal grandfather’s name. He was the Corellian senator during the rise of the Empire. A great man._

Andras… 

The softness of his own thoughts surprised Kylo and looking up he found Hux’s gaze watching him with a wistful expression, awfully fond and long suffering. 

Fathers, it seemed, were generally a difficult subject.

 

***

 

He loved the silence. 

Not the forced stillness found on the Finalizer, where thousands of voices screamed incessantly into a void they didn’t understand. Nor the silence of a planet with animals rustling, disturbing the ground, disturbing him. No, Kylo Ren loved the true silence of space, when he was alone and no one - No One - had anything to say. 

Here, in the cockpit of his VCX-100 freighter, he was for once himself, a minuscule space he had carved out with secrecy and an amount of patience that he wouldn’t have had before Starkiller. 

Stars glittered outside, dotted the glowing center of the galaxy to a wide diamond studded band. Sometimes Kylo Ren wondered what the people on Coruscant saw when they turned their eyes towards the emptiness of the unknown regions, where nothing but the darkness lurked. Did they fear what lived there? Him, Hux… Snoke? Probably. And with good reason. They still hadn’t fully restored order after the loss of the Hosnian system and everything in it, though the General of the Resistance did an admirable job of it. 

Kylo Ren snorted and got up to get another jacket. Hanging in space like this got unpleasant real fast. Powering down the life support systems to minimize the risk of detection was a great idea in theory, but to avoid the easiest mode of identification - thermal heat - meant to just be cold for hours on end. Standing in the galley, Kylo Ren pondered his woolen robe and cowl and sighed, before he threw a blanket over the jacket he already wore. 

As soon as he got back, he would take care of a new insulation layer for the Ferret. Was about time to renew a few things anyways. The ship was not new, everything in here lived in and used, colors and polished veneer long faded. It was older than he was, but with anything built by CEC that was not a point on the negative scale. 

Kylo Ren kept the Corellian Freighter in a secret hangar on an agricultural planet far out on the borders to the neutral zone, secret even from his master and his Knights. This was not what Kylo Ren did. Fiddling with the machine, piloting. Those thing were unbecoming of a Knight of Ren, but sometimes, he had found, an unmarked pirate vessel was the only thing that drew no attention in Republic space or the Neutral Zone. 

Nobody expected a smuggler to whip out the red cross-guard saber that by now was a bit of a horror story in the galaxy. 

Ren grinned. He liked that. He liked it for what it was - a tale of terror- and as a front. 

Returning to the cockpit with a mug of caf he activated the holoscreen on the dashboard. The shuttle had left Core One five hours ago, taking into account the recent collapse of the red giant near the core route, they should drop out of Hyperspace for a lane switch within the next 30 minutes and be greeted by an anti-cruiser EMP blast. Originally developed against standard issue Corellian corvettes, the bombs had become a staple in most pirate’s arsenal, their usefulness only limited by the need for perfect timing. 

With the Force on his side, it was as if somebody had created a toy and then tacked a label on it that said: Kylo Ren. 

After this was over he would have to confess to his General that one of his intelligence technicians did not spontaneously develop heavy migraines. But Kylo had needed a slicer that could get into the private accounts of one of the First Order's highest ranking - retired - officers. And secrecy, he had, above all, needed secrecy. Lt. Salan would recover in time and until then the man was just too good to demote him over a few sick days. 

He had found the private transport that would transfer a new pupil to the stormtrooper installations on Vanua. The boy was set to train with the rest of the new class for two years. HX-3433 was already marked for advanced ranged combat, advanced armed combat, advanced athletics. He scored above 98% in his age group in everything and that made him valuable enough to be escorted by a six men team and two pilots. 

Good. 

Kylo drained the caf and threw the mug on the co-pilot’s chair before he gathered his legs under him and placed the lightsaber across his lap. His hands rested on his knees with the fingertips of both hands touching cool metal. His right kept contact with the saber, his left with the detonator. The last thing he saw, before he closed his eyes and send his mind out into the nothingness of space, was a rounded face with serious, jade-colored eyes that stared into the camera as if nothing had ever made him smile. 

Kylo Ren let his lungs expand with a deep breath, searching for a mind he had only ever brushed in sleep so far. 

_Son..._

After 4 months of this, he was in serious need of some violence. 

 

*** 

 

Cold metal vibrated under Kylo’s boots as he marched along the empty corridor to Hux quarters. 

Nobody had attempted to step into his path since he had boarded the ship, not even glances that broke up the strangely muted atmosphere in the silent hallways. 

Good, so they had heard already. Bad, it meant that Hux had heard.

No matter what the man claimed, Kylo Ren knew that he was capable of caring for that little boy that looked so much like him.

“Lord Ren!” 

Phasma, of course. She was the only one who’d dare stop him. She was also the only one who suspected that he and Hux did more than just yell at each other. 

“Yes, Captain?”

“Sir, the General recently suffered a bereavement in his immediate-”

“Thank you, Captain, I am aware. Good day.”

Kylo Ren felt her gaze on his back as he marched on, he felt her anger like an acute slap. 

Not unmerited, though not for the reasons she thought. Of course, the jammer had failed. If being sired by Han Solo had taught him anything then it was the fact that nothing ever truly worked. 

The Ferret had good engines and strong shields, for a ship that was moved so rarely, but of course, something had had to go wrong….

Punching in the code to Hux rooms after he had made sure that nobody was in the hallway, Kylo steeled himself against the wave of barely subdued anguish that battered against his mind from the other side. Behind the doors lay darkness, pitch black darkness, permeated only by the desperate scent of grief. 

“Hux!” 

No one answered Kylo’s call, but there was a minuscule flicker of recognition from Hux's personal office. The one where he liked to spend hours, watching the stars from the viewport behind his desk, the diamond studded blackness the only true background for the man’s beauty, today for the ugliness of his despair. 

“Hux.” Kylo marched into the room and stopped. 

A black silhouette sat against the faint light behind him. No uniform jacket, hair disheveled, the scent of brandy clinging cheaply to everything. 

“Do you remember, Lord Ren,” he murmured to the nothingness beyond his window, his voice heavy with alcohol’s forced softness, “When I told you the boy meant nothing to me? I lied.”

Kylo unlatched the mask, as he walked closer, in here his steps whispered silently over the rug; the sounds of his helmet hitting the surface of the desk rang so much louder for it. 

Hux flinched.

“I’m sorry, Hux.” To Kylo’s ears, his voice sounded hollow, meaningless in the face of the grief he had caused. A datapad was dumped next to the helmet and he rounded the desk to reach his lover, even as Hux snarled: “Don’t pity me, Ren. I don’t give a flying…”

Dropping to his knees came naturally, begging for absolution before he confessed his sins. 

“I’m sorry, Hux.” 

This close Ren could smell the faint salt of his lover’s tears, spilled silently in the stark isolation that his status granted him. Cut off from everyone. And tomorrow or the day after he would have walked out of here, pulled together by nothing but will and spite and ruled this ship with not a ripple of his heartache visible.

“What did you do, Ren?” Horror dawned in Hux and Kylo Ren threw open the gates to his mind, razed the walls to his thoughts to the ground, memories presented on a silver plate for the man before him to grab, to vandalize or cherish. 

Hux didn’t hesitate. He crashed into Kylo’s thoughts with the force of a supernova, brilliantly burning rage and so much pain, so much pain…

_I’m sorry, Hux. I tried to jam their signal. The jammer failed and they got out a distress call. I never intended for you to know before I got back._

Kneeling he reached out with his hands, steadying himself on the hard planes of Hux's stomach while his lover tore through his mind until he found the one memory, the one picture that Kylo Ren presented to him on open hands, pliant and a willing accomplice in his own violation. 

He sat at the Ferret’s controls. Under his fingers, the hyperdrive hummed gently with the a lover’s purr, stable as the Finalizer’s engines while stars streaked past outside. 

He felt the things he had done still thrum in his blood with deep satisfaction, as he often did. His natural reaction to a healthy dose of violence. Today, though, he was not on a kill mission. This was nothing but a run-of-the-mill smuggling run, only that his cargo was so much more precious.

Looking down, he couldn’t help raising a hand, placing it gently on the little red-haired head that snuffled softly against his chest. The boy had curled up in his lap, his legs drawn up under Ren’s cowl that wrapped him safely in warmth as he slept, fingers curled in the robe of the Master of the Knights of Ren as if he were the only safe spot in the Galaxy. 

With a scowl Kylo brushed his hand to the child’s split lip, caressed over the bruise that marked his cheekbone, sending a touch of the Force so soft he was unsure it would have any effect. 

But he couldn’t not have done it. 

Brushing back the boy’s hair, Kylo Ren couldn’t help but smile either. He looked so much like his father. Liked to snuggle up just the same too. 

Looking up, Kylo found Hux shell-shocked eyes, his hands clenched painfully into the hair of the man on the floor in front of him. 

“Nobody will ever lay a hand on him again,” Kylo whispered a stark promise.

“They say the shuttle exploded…” Hux croaked and Ren reached up, swiped his gloved thumb over the reddened skin over Hux cheekbone.

“It did. He wasn’t on it anymore.”

“Where...” As Hux's voice broke, Ren stood and scooped him into his arms. 

“There is a side branch of the Naberrie family living on Oorm in the Neutral Zone. They follow a strict non-engagement policy. The family of Sebestia Naberrie’s husband has a history of producing redheads. Which was completely coincidental, by the way. The data, pictures, video, their background checks are on the datapad.” 

“How did you… how did you come up with that, Ren?” Hux's fist didn’t let go of Kylo’s hair and that was alright, too. 

“Ben Solo’s grandmother was Padmé Amidala-Naberrie-Skywalker.”

“Family then…” Hux breathed with a pained choke.

“Ben Solo is dead, Hux.” 

To Hux’s disbelieving snort Kylo Ren smiled and walked them into the bedroom, accepting the painful scratch of Hux’s fingernails as his due. 

Inside his mind Hux rifled through more pictures, filing memories with the speed that was unique to him. 

The boy clutching Ren’s hand, a shy smile on his lips. “What can I call you, sir?” “How about,” a flicker of doubt passed. “Just call me Ben.” “Ok, Uncle Ben.”

The boy sitting on a bunk bed idly thumping his bare feet against the metal, watching the floating ball in front of him with barely restrained glee. 

Him chewing solemnly on a ration bar, mumbling with a full mouth about the obvious advantages of the DLT-19 blaster as compared to the DLT-20A, laughing as Kylo nodded slowly without any idea what the child talked about. Weapons, especially sniper rifles, had always been Hux’s forte.

“Do they know who he is? Redhead children named Brendol are not exactly inconspicuous, Ren, if they…”

“His name is Andras. It’s the only one he knows.”

Against him Hux shuddered, drawing him in as Kylo put him down on the bed. 

“Fuck me, Ren. I need to… “

“You’re drunk, Hux. And I am not exactly without blame in that.”

“Shut up, Ren. Shut up and fuck me, you idiot. You glorious, you stupid, you… “

Kylo Ren closed the General’s mouth with his own, pushing him backward with the weight of his own body. 

_I wished you’d just let me kill your father, Hux._

_Shut up. Just shut up. Is he safe?_

Under Ren’s hands, Hux's shirt ripped, buttons flying every which way. 

_Trust me, Hux. This is not the first five-year-old I've hidden away._

 

 

*** 

 

They were just a bunch of cheap dignitaries with a thin veneer of fake sympathy, Ren thought as the three men boarded their shuttle.

“Tragic,” Kylo Ren murmured to the impeccably dressed man at his side, a perfect picture of a General of the First Order.

“Indeed,” Hux stared after the shuttle as it left the landing bay of the Finalizer, the box with his father’s medals still in his hands. It took a man who knew him very, very well, to see the tiny smile that curled in the corner of his mouth. 

“But he served the First Order to his last breath,” Kylo said, staring ahead. He didn’t need to see it, to notice the smile was there. Hux self-assuredness was evident in each night of uninterrupted sleep, in each way he didn’t crave for pain

“Did he now?” 

Their gazes met, to Hux's raised eyebrow. 

“This fuel core shielding is a hazard, General. It’s only a matter of time before the next ruptures.”

“You are right, Ren. We should work at rectifying the situation at once. The…potential for sabotage is far too great a risk.”

_Are you laughing, Hux?_

_No, Ren, I am of course not laughing. I am glad my father went out of this world, doing something useful._

_Staring into your eyes as you choked him to death?_

_That, too, Ren. That too._

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Legacy. What is legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you’ll never get to see."


End file.
